Gen 3:1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
Yep. Calls the serpent an animal. I think the whole bit about Satan taking the form of a serpent is more Milton than Bible.
Taking the same pool of scientific knowledge, a scientist can interpret the elegance of the universe as one of either two things, depending on which axiom, theism or atheism, he or she has chosen.
1) Theism: design implies intelligence. One could argue this is the Accum's razor path.
2) Atheism: design implies nothing, because if there wasn't design, we wouldn't be here to see it. Instead of arguing for God then, one would instead have to argue for the existence of multiple universes, where some universes fell apart in chaos as their physical laws didn't weave together in either the one (or one of many possible) neccessary perfect balance(s). Or they may need to believe in a fundamental law of physics that supercedes even the universe, which ends up sounding a lot like God anyway.
3) And of course, there is the third path, that a scientist is just content with science as a modular, disconnected concept, as many mathematicians are content with proofs that throw out the axiom of choice, since it causes so many contridictions.
Whether God exists or not is really just an axiom, neither provable nor unprovable, but that doesn't mean the idea should not have any place in the scientific community. Math, which serves as the foundation of science, rests on many axioms, some which are quite similar to the idea of God, such as the axiom of infinity or the axiom of choice (these concepts are discussed in Set theory).
So although science should be able to still serve its modular function of scrutinizing the universe, whether or not there is a God (just as most mathematical proofs can work with or without the axiom of choice, for instance), it still doesn't preclude that the question of God is a valid one even for scientists to ask, if not to pretend to the belief that God can actually be defined and scrutinized by scientific methods.
However, I will say that any time faith issues are introduced in secular institutions -- while this is not bad in and of itself -- you create a powerful psychological force that greedy people can easily leverage, which is terrible.
I wander what kind of community image they'll have? Maybe they can make it seem more fun and weird as opposed to Fedora, which feels very cool and hacker-like.
Can we stop with the big Google conspiracey theories? There's no real reason to fear Google, even if they are "evil", because the search engine market is so divided up; no one has too much power. I doubt Yahoo is going anywhere, given all their powerful corporate ties, and they provide enough of an offset to Google to prevent de-facto standardization of the web, as Microsoft has tried/is still trying to do.
The Linux desktop isn't going to take off in the first world. No chance.
Now, developing countries... I believe that's where Linux will make a dent.
Then, after a generation of new coders in these countries grow up with it, Linux will storm on to the desktop scene.
Until then, just watch it take over the server and smartphone markets instead.
Not to mention that *anything* gaining ground on Windows means more heterogeneous environments, which in turn means greater necessity of standards adherence, which then in turn is great for everybody -- especially open source.
Really, Apple is a model open source company in many ways: use an open stack as a strong foundation, and put your main product (Aqua and apps) on top. In many ways, it's similar to Google's approach to open source.
This is how it's suppose to work, after all -- allows guys with big ideas to jump in real quick without having to worry about all the gritty details on their way up the app stack to what they really want to do.
Desktop Linux is a viable option for developing nations' IT departments, though. Don't discount that!
Mac OSX, however, makes the most sense for companies that can afford to deploy a (quasi) proprietary operating system.
And Linux desktops are very well suited to fixed-functionality workstations and thin clients.
As a general purpose desktop OS, though, Linux is definitely not there quite yet. Oh, it works, but it's still a bit rough around the edges, though I'm get the feeling Canonical (Ubuntu Linux) and Novell (Suse Linux) hope to change that over the next couple of years.
OSX is the perfect replacement for Windows for companies that can afford it, but Linux desktops are definitely the future for developing nations' IT departments.
In the U.S. and Western Europe, however, I don't think *desktop* Linux has a chance against OSX, especially if Apple decides to work with Dell or the like for some sort of business commodity PC unit. The Apple move to Intel is definitely a foreshadowing of this.
Apple knows the time is ripe to either attack Microsoft or wait to get struck back.
Now, Linux in the server room... well, about everyone has seen the writing on the wall, there (especially if the future is in clusters)... 'nuff said.
This post had no real logical flow... hope you enjoyed it.
So far, Google has been a pretty ethical company, but this move (which I doubt was accidental) shows that they're willing to create their own definition of ethics that may or may not include U.S. state law.
I suspect Google is willing to simply take the legal hit and pay for the damages in exchange for all the vital information this man will unofficially provide them: Microsoft's China and search strategies.
When companies get as big or have as much momentum as Microsoft or Google, law can often cease to be part of their constraints and more of just another factor to consider in their maneuvering. It's unethical, though not neccessarily immoral, and it's business for giants like these.
So, Google woos away a key MS executive, who probably knows a lot of vital information about MS's search strategy and China strategy... wow.
I bet Google figured taking the legal hit was worth the strategic move of getting this guy. I'm sure they'll just suck up all the fees and fines and keep this guy and his inside info as their own.
Funny to see such MS-esque tactics being used against MS.
I'm getting sick of having to hear who's the innovator, and who isn't: Microsoft, IBM, Firefox, Opera -- whatever! Can't we all just write good software and leave it at that?
Isn't the new Xbox coming from Microsoft going to be PowerPC-based? I had always thought the Xbox was an important factor in the "invade-your-living-room" strategy of Microsoft. So is IBM putting similar technology in these custom PowerPC chips, too?
But ultimately, I think the PC will never topple the TV. While technically they could be blended into a single machine, people have been enculturated deeply to keep them separate entities.
Seriously, what value does a Media Center PC have over a convential media center? If anything, "convential" media centers are going to increasingly get PC-like functionality and displace the computer in people's homes, not visa-versa; they're the ones coming from a point of strength.
Not to troll, but hasn't it been every time Microsoft introduces some innovative network-related feature, like Remote Desktop or ActiveX, it's fundamentally flawed?
Makes me really anticipate Indigo:P
I'm sure the developers who think these things up are genuinely bright people, so I would assume it's the upper management with their "product" mentality want to rush these innovative features out the door, when they really should've been confined to serious lab testing for years before Microsoft starts touting them.
The Linux desktop is almost ready. Two major places to keep your eyes over the next two years:
Ubuntu Suse
I'm deliberately leaving out Fedora/RedHat. Not to troll, but they don't really seem nearly as motivated in the desktop space as these other two entities do.
But then again, I get the sneaking suspiscion that the ultimate Linux desktop isn't going to come from a U.S. or Euro country... keep your eyes on:
Brazil. They're preping to kick some desktop ass. Linux is definitely going to be a phenomenon as the 3rd world moves up.
The problem with package managers is that you generally need to have some idea of what you're looking for first, and usually this comes with browsing the web. Oh sure, there's categories and descriptions, but what average user wants to try out each and every app?
No, what someone looking for an app is going to want to do is either:
1) Buy it in a store. 2) Search the web for what people are saying is the best app for the job.
(1) is pretty much not in the picture for Linux right now, but if someone goes with (2), wouldn't it be convenient to just download your app off the internet, instead of opening up a package manager? That's really become the standard way of getting software -- for most users, apart from buying it.
But no... unless it's RedHat or Debian, you'll probably not find your package online... and if you do, you have to know it's the right version.
Plus, to get all the software you need, a user has to add repositories and whatnot usually. Of course, then, the more repos you add, the more likely your package manager is going to eventually have an issue. Then what? Then you'll end up having to wget and dpkg something, yadda-yadda.
Sure, this is fine for peeps like you and me, but is it easy? Is it desktop-ish? Nah. It's fine for people use to the command line, but this article (and the whole concept of desktop OS) is about abstracting past the command line into easy universal metaphors.
The problem isn't Linux. It's a great kernel, very stable, and makes a great server of nearly any sort.
The problem is with trying to integrate the whole freakin' OSS world (plus a piece or three of proprietary stuff here and there) into a functioning distro.
Yeah, it'd be great (in a way) to have central control over the Free Desktop System, but that'd be a bit of an oxymoron.
Slowly, though, things are standardizing quite naturally... the OSS ecosystem is killing off the weaker projects (like sound servers, oh jeez... way too many of those) and little by little, all the pieces of a fully-functioning Linux/*BSD-based desktop OS are coming together. (And when I say *BSD, I mean anything but Darwin:)
Of course, as I say this, I had to run fsck.ext3/dev/hdc1 today, as my Hoary Hedgehog installation mysteriously got hosed. The only thing I can think of causing this was that I was transcoding Return of the King overnight... but that's just a shot in the dark.
In 1953 Iran's prime minister Mohammed Mossadeq, who had been elected to parliament in 1923 and again in 1944 and who had been prime minister since 1951, was removed from power in a complex plot orchestrated by British and US intelligence agencies ("Operation Ajax").
Slashdot Mirror
I love Microsoft for how much they've helped the development of the web. I'm in IE7 Heaven, baby!
If I were Google, I'd filter both CNET and their swashbuckling "ar articles", too ... filthy pirates.
And then there's the bit said by Jesus that "He saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning", which gives rise to the fallen angel theory.
So, the Bible is either contridictory, or the Garden story is parabolic, subsituting animal for angel.
Gen 3:1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
Yep. Calls the serpent an animal. I think the whole bit about Satan taking the form of a serpent is more Milton than Bible.
It's like that episode of the Simpsons where Homer doesn't want Bart to jump on his skateboard across the grand chasm, so he does it himself. Heheh.
When people tell me that the creation story is literal ...
I tell them that they must then think Satan is a snake.
Read up on set theory. Not all axioms are universally obvious.
To many people, God is obvious.
Taking the same pool of scientific knowledge, a scientist can interpret the elegance of the universe as one of either two things, depending on which axiom, theism or atheism, he or she has chosen.
1) Theism: design implies intelligence. One could argue this is the Accum's razor path.
2) Atheism: design implies nothing, because if there wasn't design, we wouldn't be here to see it. Instead of arguing for God then, one would instead have to argue for the existence of multiple universes, where some universes fell apart in chaos as their physical laws didn't weave together in either the one (or one of many possible) neccessary perfect balance(s). Or they may need to believe in a fundamental law of physics that supercedes even the universe, which ends up sounding a lot like God anyway.
3) And of course, there is the third path, that a scientist is just content with science as a modular, disconnected concept, as many mathematicians are content with proofs that throw out the axiom of choice, since it causes so many contridictions.
Whether God exists or not is really just an axiom, neither provable nor unprovable, but that doesn't mean the idea should not have any place in the scientific community. Math, which serves as the foundation of science, rests on many axioms, some which are quite similar to the idea of God, such as the axiom of infinity or the axiom of choice (these concepts are discussed in Set theory).
So although science should be able to still serve its modular function of scrutinizing the universe, whether or not there is a God (just as most mathematical proofs can work with or without the axiom of choice, for instance), it still doesn't preclude that the question of God is a valid one even for scientists to ask, if not to pretend to the belief that God can actually be defined and scrutinized by scientific methods.
However, I will say that any time faith issues are introduced in secular institutions -- while this is not bad in and of itself -- you create a powerful psychological force that greedy people can easily leverage, which is terrible.
I wander what kind of community image they'll have? Maybe they can make it seem more fun and weird as opposed to Fedora, which feels very cool and hacker-like.
Can we stop with the big Google conspiracey theories? There's no real reason to fear Google, even if they are "evil", because the search engine market is so divided up; no one has too much power. I doubt Yahoo is going anywhere, given all their powerful corporate ties, and they provide enough of an offset to Google to prevent de-facto standardization of the web, as Microsoft has tried/is still trying to do.
The Linux desktop isn't going to take off in the first world. No chance. Now, developing countries ... I believe that's where Linux will make a dent.
Then, after a generation of new coders in these countries grow up with it, Linux will storm on to the desktop scene.
Until then, just watch it take over the server and smartphone markets instead.
Not to mention that *anything* gaining ground on Windows means more heterogeneous environments, which in turn means greater necessity of standards adherence, which then in turn is great for everybody -- especially open source.
Really, Apple is a model open source company in many ways: use an open stack as a strong foundation, and put your main product (Aqua and apps) on top. In many ways, it's similar to Google's approach to open source.
This is how it's suppose to work, after all -- allows guys with big ideas to jump in real quick without having to worry about all the gritty details on their way up the app stack to what they really want to do.
Where would Apple be without BSD?
Desktop Linux is a viable option for developing nations' IT departments, though. Don't discount that!
Mac OSX, however, makes the most sense for companies that can afford to deploy a (quasi) proprietary operating system.
And Linux desktops are very well suited to fixed-functionality workstations and thin clients.
As a general purpose desktop OS, though, Linux is definitely not there quite yet. Oh, it works, but it's still a bit rough around the edges, though I'm get the feeling Canonical (Ubuntu Linux) and Novell (Suse Linux) hope to change that over the next couple of years.
OSX is the perfect replacement for Windows for companies that can afford it, but Linux desktops are definitely the future for developing nations' IT departments.
... well, about everyone has seen the writing on the wall, there (especially if the future is in clusters) ... 'nuff said.
... hope you enjoyed it.
In the U.S. and Western Europe, however, I don't think *desktop* Linux has a chance against OSX, especially if Apple decides to work with Dell or the like for some sort of business commodity PC unit. The Apple move to Intel is definitely a foreshadowing of this.
Apple knows the time is ripe to either attack Microsoft or wait to get struck back.
Now, Linux in the server room
This post had no real logical flow
That's part of the work of a distro; to act as a buffer between OSS and users.
So far, Google has been a pretty ethical company, but this move (which I doubt was accidental) shows that they're willing to create their own definition of ethics that may or may not include U.S. state law.
I suspect Google is willing to simply take the legal hit and pay for the damages in exchange for all the vital information this man will unofficially provide them: Microsoft's China and search strategies.
When companies get as big or have as much momentum as Microsoft or Google, law can often cease to be part of their constraints and more of just another factor to consider in their maneuvering. It's unethical, though not neccessarily immoral, and it's business for giants like these.
So, Google woos away a key MS executive, who probably knows a lot of vital information about MS's search strategy and China strategy ... wow.
I bet Google figured taking the legal hit was worth the strategic move of getting this guy. I'm sure they'll just suck up all the fees and fines and keep this guy and his inside info as their own.
Funny to see such MS-esque tactics being used against MS.
I'm getting sick of having to hear who's the innovator, and who isn't: Microsoft, IBM, Firefox, Opera -- whatever! Can't we all just write good software and leave it at that?
Isn't the new Xbox coming from Microsoft going to be PowerPC-based? I had always thought the Xbox was an important factor in the "invade-your-living-room" strategy of Microsoft. So is IBM putting similar technology in these custom PowerPC chips, too?
But ultimately, I think the PC will never topple the TV. While technically they could be blended into a single machine, people have been enculturated deeply to keep them separate entities.
Seriously, what value does a Media Center PC have over a convential media center? If anything, "convential" media centers are going to increasingly get PC-like functionality and displace the computer in people's homes, not visa-versa; they're the ones coming from a point of strength.
Not to troll, but hasn't it been every time Microsoft introduces some innovative network-related feature, like Remote Desktop or ActiveX, it's fundamentally flawed?
:P
Makes me really anticipate Indigo
I'm sure the developers who think these things up are genuinely bright people, so I would assume it's the upper management with their "product" mentality want to rush these innovative features out the door, when they really should've been confined to serious lab testing for years before Microsoft starts touting them.
The Linux desktop is almost ready. Two major places to keep your eyes over the next two years:
... keep your eyes on:
Ubuntu
Suse
I'm deliberately leaving out Fedora/RedHat. Not to troll, but they don't really seem nearly as motivated in the desktop space as these other two entities do.
But then again, I get the sneaking suspiscion that the ultimate Linux desktop isn't going to come from a U.S. or Euro country
Brazil. They're preping to kick some desktop ass. Linux is definitely going to be a phenomenon as the 3rd world moves up.
The problem with package managers is that you generally need to have some idea of what you're looking for first, and usually this comes with browsing the web. Oh sure, there's categories and descriptions, but what average user wants to try out each and every app?
... unless it's RedHat or Debian, you'll probably not find your package online ... and if you do, you have to know it's the right version.
:)
No, what someone looking for an app is going to want to do is either:
1) Buy it in a store.
2) Search the web for what people are saying is the best app for the job.
(1) is pretty much not in the picture for Linux right now, but if someone goes with (2), wouldn't it be convenient to just download your app off the internet, instead of opening up a package manager? That's really become the standard way of getting software -- for most users, apart from buying it.
But no
Plus, to get all the software you need, a user has to add repositories and whatnot usually. Of course, then, the more repos you add, the more likely your package manager is going to eventually have an issue. Then what? Then you'll end up having to wget and dpkg something, yadda-yadda.
Sure, this is fine for peeps like you and me, but is it easy? Is it desktop-ish? Nah. It's fine for people use to the command line, but this article (and the whole concept of desktop OS) is about abstracting past the command line into easy universal metaphors.
Not arcane incantations of geeky power
The problem isn't Linux. It's a great kernel, very stable, and makes a great server of nearly any sort.
... the OSS ecosystem is killing off the weaker projects (like sound servers, oh jeez ... way too many of those) and little by little, all the pieces of a fully-functioning Linux/*BSD-based desktop OS are coming together. (And when I say *BSD, I mean anything but Darwin :)
/dev/hdc1 today, as my Hoary Hedgehog installation mysteriously got hosed. The only thing I can think of causing this was that I was transcoding Return of the King overnight ... but that's just a shot in the dark.
The problem is with trying to integrate the whole freakin' OSS world (plus a piece or three of proprietary stuff here and there) into a functioning distro.
Yeah, it'd be great (in a way) to have central control over the Free Desktop System, but that'd be a bit of an oxymoron.
Slowly, though, things are standardizing quite naturally
Of course, as I say this, I had to run fsck.ext3
See, AJAX is not a new concept!